


War Games

by northernexposure



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:28:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23110228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northernexposure/pseuds/northernexposure
Summary: Some things she can fight. Others she can't, however hard she tries.
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Comments: 42
Kudos: 122
Collections: Mia's Meat Raffle





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [traccigaryn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/traccigaryn/gifts).



> The lovely Mia Cooper ran a charity 'Meat Raffle' auction to raise money for charities attempting to alleviate the effects of the Australian bush fires. I volunteered to write a fic, and the equally lovely Tracci Garyn drew the short straw and won my services! She's been extremely patient because it's taken me an age to find the time to start writing this story. 
> 
> Thank you, as always, to MissyHissy3 for the beta read.

The sound of water crashing over rocks mingled with weapons fire, a dual cacophony that roared along with the blood in her ears. Janeway ran, trying to keep her feet from tangling in the dense scrub. Ahead, _Voyager_ ’s two survey teams did the same. Kathryn could barely breathe. The air was humid. Her uniform had stuck to her skin long before the attack came. A vast, surging body of water cut off their escape to the east. To the west the jungle was edged by a sheer plateau of jagged grey rock. Between was a narrow valley of boulder-strewn earth.

 _It’s a trap,_ she realised, _they’re kettling us._

She swung around, trying to angle her phaser behind her, but she couldn’t see a target, only foliage. She stumbled, crashing against a tree trunk rough enough to scrape her skin even through her uniform. Righting herself she caught the shimmer of a transporter beam as _Voyager_ scooped up a handful of her people. The evacuation was taking too long, complicated by the terrain and the fact that they were all moving, but most of all by the planet’s unique atmosphere.

Another volley of weapons fire shot over her head, close enough that Kathryn felt the burn and crackle of its wake. Another shimmer in the air, another few hands taken to safety. To her left and a little ahead was Chakotay, leaping from rock to rock, twisting every few minutes to fire his phaser behind him as he herded his team in front of him, helping those who needed it. They had yet to see their attackers - for all any of them knew whatever lifeform was pursing them could be invisible.

The effect of their weapons, on the other hand, definitely wasn’t.

Another burst of weapons fire, another close call, and then someone ahead of her was screaming. It was Randle. Kathryn could see the young Ensign staggering, spun around by the force of the blast. His right arm was gone below the shoulder, blood spraying from the wound in an arc that spattered the rocks at his feet. Janeway shouted, lunged for him as he lost his footing, failed to reach him. The last expression the Captain saw on her crewman’s face was abject horror. Then he plunged backwards out of view, straight into the river. By the time Janeway reached the severed arm, Ensign Randle had vanished beneath the surging white water. Gone.

Kathryn snatched up the dead man’s phaser and turned to face the onslaught, dropping between the uncertain cover of two rocks with both weapons raised. She was done running. Whatever was coming after them would have to cross the same ground – what was a choke point for the _Voyager_ crew was equally so for their pursuers. Besides, she had no better options and all she needed to buy was enough time for _Voyager_ to get a lock on the last of the crew.

“Captain!”

“There’s nowhere to run,” she yelled. “We need to hold them off for as long as we can.”

Kathryn started firing, a dual spread of phaser fire in as wide a field as she could reach. She still couldn’t see the enemy but she could maximise the chance of hitting one of them. The jungle reverberated, flora littering the air with ragged green confetti as it was cut to shreds.

There was a movement in the corner of her vision – Chakotay, obeying an order she hadn’t even needed to give. He dropped down beside her, not even sparing her a glance as he added his phaser fire to her onslaught. It wasn’t enough, and they both knew it, but there was a slight let-up in fire by their attackers, as if whatever was out there was reassessing the situation. It was all Janeway had expected. She hoped it was all Tuvok would need.

A blast skimmed the rock in front of them, close enough that Janeway thought they were done for. Chakotay pushed her down, hard, her forehead connecting with the rock as he covered her body with his own. She smelled burning, felt his weight change as some vital energy left it. Kathryn twisted over, head throbbing and vision blurred, Chakotay pinning her beneath him. He was dead already, she thought, his face pressed against her clavicle, his arms limp and heavy.

The firing stopped abruptly and in the relative silence of its absence she heard instead the heavy tread of booted feet coming closer. A second later she felt the fizz of _Voyager_ ’s transporter beam gathering in her gut. The blur in her vision intensified as the planet vanished around her.

She materialised with Chakotay’s weight crushing her into the transporter pad.

“Medic!” she shouted, trying to lever him up. “I need a medic!”

Hands grabbed at the Commander’s body, pulling him away from her. She scrambled to her feet to see Paris and Kes trying to help him. Beyond them milled the survey teams that had been on the planet. She looked over their heads at the transporter operator.

“Have we got everyone?”

“All but one, Captain. Ensign Randle –“

“The river,” she said, the crowd parting as she made her way to transporter control. “He went into the river.”

She reached the Lieutenant’s side and looked at the panel, but the colours swam in front of her eyes. Squinting, Kathryn focused enough to understand that there was no hope of recovering Randle’s body. She tapped her combadge.

“Janeway to Tuvok. Report. Is the ship under attack?”

“No, Captain. There are currently no other ships in the vicinity of _Voyager_.”

“Get us out of here – set a course for the Alpha Quadrant, warp five. I’m on my way.”

“Captain–” Kes was on her feet, coming for her. Behind her Chakotay dematerialised – an emergency medical transport to sick bay.

Her head ached. “I’m fine. I have to get to the bridge.”

“But you have a head injury-”

She waved a finger at the regenerator in Kes’s hand. “Give me that. You and Paris concentrate on everyone else. Go.”

Kes looked as if she wanted to say something else but Janeway made for the door.

The journey to the bridge seemed to take an age. During it she felt the phantom of Chakotay’s weight against her, his nose pressing against her shoulder. When the doors opened she yanked her uniform jacket down, remembered the medical tool in her hand, and then mentally cursed herself for not using the time in the ‘lift more wisely.

Tuvok stood up from her command chair as she walked onto the bridge and down the stairs. The lights of the consoles seemed painfully bright, reds blinking like dwarf stars in her fractured vision.

“Captain.”

“Long range scans?”

“There’s no sign of pursuit.”

She put her hands on her hips, staring out at the streaked starlight whipping past. “I want to know what happened. They came out of nowhere. How did we not know the planet was inhabited?”

“The incident will be investigated, Captain.”

She rubbed her forehead without thinking. Her hand came away bloody.

“Captain,” Tuvok said, quietly. “I believe _Voyager_ to be out of danger. You must go to sick bay for treatment. I will keep you updated.”

Janeway nodded, then glanced beyond Tuvok to where Harry stood at his console, watching her with worried eyes. Randle had been a friend of his, she knew. The young man had been a musician too, hadn’t he? A pianist, she thought.

“Keep an eye on long-range scans, Ensign,” she ordered. “Look out for any anomaly that might indicate a cloaked ship. We couldn’t see our pursuers. If that’s as a result of technology, it may extend to their off-world hardware.”

“Aye, Captain.”

She looked at Tuvok. “You have the bridge.”

“Yes, Captain.”

She almost didn’t go to sick bay. She had the regenerator, after all, and her place was on the bridge or at least as close to it as she could get, in the ready room. But her vision still wouldn’t clear, which indicated a concussion, something the regenerator alone couldn’t heal. She’d be no good to her crew if she made her medical situation worse by ignoring it and now, of all times, she owed them. Whether their assessment of the planet had been lacking or not, she’d taken her crew into a deadly situation. She owed it to them to face the music for the loss of Randle and-

Kathryn drew a rasping breath, clenched her hand around the regenerator so hard that it left an indent of itself across her palm.

Sick bay was a burble of quiet activity. Janeway was relieved to see that most members of the survey teams that had been on the planet had already been discharged. There was no sign of the Doctor, but Kes immediately came towards her.

“Captain – please, sit down. Let me deal with that head wound.”

Kathryn let the young woman lead her to a biobed and perched on the edge of it. “Where’s the Doctor?”

“In surgery. Commander Chakotay’s injuries-”

Kes’s fingers were against her forehead – she felt the tremor Kathryn couldn’t entirely suppress. Kes stilled and drew back a fraction to look her in the eye.

“He’s going to be all right, Captain,” Kes said, softly. “He’s badly burned and has suffered severe blood loss, but the Doctor is confident he will recover.”

Janeway swallowed hard, something white-hot searing its way down from her throat through her chest. She nodded, too light-headed to speak for fear of giving something away that she shouldn’t, to herself if no one else.

Later, the remainder of her shift over, a senior staff meeting conducted and as much of Chakotay’s administrative duties performed as she was able in his absence, Janeway returned to an even quieter sick bay with a PADD. Kes had retired and only the EMH was in evidence, sitting at his desk. The hologram stood as she arrived at his door.

“Captain,” he said. “No doubt you’d like an update on Commander Chakotay’s condition. In fact I was just preparing a written report, if-”

Janeway waved a hand. “I don’t need chapter and verse right now, Doctor. I just came to see how he’s doing.”

“It’ll be a while until the Commander will be able to resume his normal duties, but I’m pleased to say that day will actually come. I won’t lie, it was touch and go there for a while.”

“Can I see him?”

The Doctor led her into an antechamber. Chakotay lay on a biobed, asleep, a sheet pulled up to his shoulders. He looked untouched, his face even peaceful in repose, although presumably that was largely thanks to a heavy dose of medication.

She glanced at the EMH. “I’d like to stay for a while.”

“Captain – I’d be remiss not to point out that you were also injured and should be resting.”

“Noted, Doctor. Thank you.”

There was a brief pause before the hologram took the dismissal for what it was and retreated to his office. Kathryn stood for a moment, immersed in the latent hum of the room, looking down at the officer who had saved her life by being willing to sacrifice his own. After a moment she lifted one hand and pressed the tips of her fingers to his bare shoulder. His skin was warm under her touch. She let go a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. It felt, somehow, as if it had come from somewhere deeper than her lungs.

Janeway pulled a chair closer to the biobed and sat, looking at the PADD. On the screen was a letter she had been trying to formulate for hours; a letter she had no way of sending but nonetheless felt compelled to write. It wasn’t the first time the Captain of _Voyager_ had lost a crew member, and each time she did this was a ritual Janeway carried out as soon as possible after the event. It was an address to the family of the lost, an explanation of events in an attempt to answer the inevitable, eternal question of _why_. In the wake of their violent passage into the Delta Quadrant Janeway had written them alone, but at some point soon after Chakotay had become her first officer he had realised what she was doing. From that point, they had done it together – or at least, he had always been in the room as she had worked on the letters, as if he understood that his presence was often support enough.

Kathryn didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there, staring blankly at the screen in her hand, when she heard the whisper of his voice.

“Captain?”

She looked up and there he was, head turned against the pillow, blinking at her. Her heart pulsed an unexpectedly painful double beat.

She stood, moving to lean over him. “Chakotay.”

“Did we lose anyone?”

“Ensign Marley Randle.”

“The ship?”

“Safe.”

He shifted slightly, dark eyes roving over her face. “And you?”

She smiled. “I’m fine.”

“But…” he lifted a hand, drifted it across the faint bruise that remained on her forehead.

“I’m _fine_ , Commander. Thanks to you. You saved my life, and by putting yourself in harm’s way. We nearly lost you.”

He smiled faintly, his eyes shutting with fatigue. When he spoke, it was in a blurred mumble. “Better than the alternative.”

The pulse in her heart echoed again. “Sleep,” she said, softly. “I need you well. I need you back beside me.”

“Aye, Captain...” His answering whisper was almost entirely lost.

She watched him for another moment or two. It took a lot of effort not to brush her fingers across his tattoo.

[TBC]


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wasn't sure I was ever going to come back to this, but here I am... Hope someone finds this a entertaining, if only just a little. Thank you to MissyHissy3 for the beta read. 
> 
> Sending love to everyone in lockdown.

It’s the loss of control that scares her the most. The idea that she is not in command of her own actions is horrifying in the extreme. Kathryn Janeway prides herself in her ability to keep herself in check. After all, if she can’t, then how can she possibly be trusted to lead others?

_Keep your chin up. Keep calm. Think. There will be a way out of wherever you’ve found yourself as long as you just THINK._ It’s a mantra she adopted in Officer Training and it has never failed her.

Until now.

Janeway feels both as if she’s watching herself from afar and at the same time from inside a locked box buried deep within her own skull. Neither one of these perspectives is helpful. Either way she is a spectator to her own actions, a bystander. She is helpless.

She is holding a phaser rifle. It is set to kill. The Captain has only the vaguest memory of how she came to be in possession of it. There was a commotion, a rout: she fears that she has hurt someone. She doesn’t know who, but it must have been one of her own crew. It’s the only explanation, isn’t it, rationally speaking, for how this weapon came to be in her hands? And they _are_ her hands, though they don’t quite feel like it. Her fingers move with a purpose that is not her own, in that dreamlike way they have since all this began.

Janeway tries to define what she means by ‘this’. ‘This’ is an invasion. She understands, without assessment, that a consciousness not her own is present in her cranium. It is controlling her actions, her speech – but not her thoughts. Those have been walled up somewhere they cannot make trouble. Somewhere so distant that they have been rendered irrelevant.

Janeway is in a fever dream, tethered to a self that she cannot reach. She has been running, she can tell that by the rasping of her breath, the burning of her lungs. The thing controlling her looks around, and the Captain sees, through eyes that are hers and also somehow not hers at all, that she is in one of _Voyager_ ’s cargo bays. It is crammed with containers of varying sizes – so full after their last stop at a trading post that the crew has constructed a mezzanine floor to accommodate the excess. Between the stacked goods are narrow passageways that have been left clear to make access easier. The thing that is now her slips into one of these. Janeway bobs along with it, a balloon clutched in a child’s fist, with no agency of her own.

_This must be what drowning feels like_ , she thinks. _Sinking, sinking, away from oneself, away from the world and everyone in it._

There’s something off with the lighting and she realises that it is flashing red. The ship is at red alert. There is no accompanying siren, though, and as she wonders why, she hears his voice, calling.

“Captain? Captain, can you hear me?”

_Yes,_ she shouts, at the top of her lungs. _Yes, Chakotay, I can hear you. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. I’M HERE._

Her lips do not move. She screams with everything she has, but she makes no sound. She is screaming only into her own skull and her voice is not strong enough to breach the box in which she is locked. Not nearly strong enough.

Silence lingers in the way it always does on _Voyager_ – with a low ambient hum that neuters all stray sound.

“I am now addressing the entity that has taken control of Captain Janeway,” comes Chakotay’s voice, after a long moment. “We know you’re there. Tell us what you want.”

Janeway finds herself jerking around. It is disorienting, being a passenger in one’s own body. Her eyes are no longer looking in the direction that she was prepared for. Her body moves swiftly through the maze of containers. Her feet execute a turn, then another, weaving among the piles of goods. She feels seasick for a moment, her equilibrium entirely out of whack. Her shoulders slew around in another sharp, jerking movement, and suddenly she can see Chakotay.

He’s standing just inside the cargo bay’s entrance. It’s sealed. He has a standard-issue phaser but it is still holstered against his hip. He is looking away from her, because he has not heard her move.

“Whatever it is,” he says again, loud enough to carry, soft enough not to challenge. “Whatever you need. We can resolve this peacefully.”

Janeway’s fingers flex around the phaser rifle. She feels the trigger and her heart explodes even as it plummets into her stomach. He hasn’t even drawn his weapon. _What are you doing in here?_ She screams at him. _What are you doing in here with me? Gas the cargo bay, knock me out, strap me down, do anything but what you’re doing right now. Get out! Get out, get out, get out!_

Her hands move, her arms with them, raising the rifle, and the eyes she cannot control have him square in their sights.

_NO,_ she screams, at him, at herself, at the thing controlling her. _No, no, no, no. No._ She won’t do this again. She won’t let her body harm another of her crew. She _can’t_.

The creature that is her moves, suddenly. It steps forward, weapon still raised. Chakotay’s attention whips around the second she clears cover. He still doesn’t go for his phaser. He raises his empty hands, instead. If she had to use one word to describe her first officer, Janeways thinks, a word that would explain to her superiors why she made this terrorist her second in command, this is the gesture she would use as illustration. _Placatory._

“We don’t want to hurt you,” Chakotay says. “We just want our Captain back, unharmed. Talk to us. Please.”

The rifle doesn’t drop. There is another moment of silence. The thing that looks like her steps forward. Kathryn imagines herself in a cage, wraps her fingers around the bars.

**OPEN**

It comes out of her, that voice. It comes out of _her_ mouth. She knows this because she can feel the movement of her vocal chords, of her throat, but she doesn’t recognise the sound. It could have come from a million light years away. Perhaps it does.

Chakotay doesn’t bat an eyelid.

“What do you mean?” he asks. “Open what?”

Her body jerks around again, this time towards the cargo bay door. Then Chakotay is back in her eyeline again.

**OPEN**

Chakotay looks at the cargo bay door and then back at the thing that is her. She wonders briefly what her face looks like. How much does she still look like herself? Is her mouth slack? Are her eyes dull? Is there something in them that isn’t her? Can he tell the difference? Or is there, to him, no difference at all?

**OPEN**

**OPEN**

**OPEN**

The voice grates through her body, more emotion than sound. She can’t feel her nerve endings but she thinks that every single one has been scoured raw.

“I can’t do that,” Chakotay says.

Her finger flexes. She knows, without a doubt, that if it contracts entirely his chest will disintegrate. She is a millimetre away from pulverising his life into fragments too small to exist.

**OPEN**

“I can’t,” Chakotay says, again. His voice is quiet, calm.

**OPEN**

“Leave her,” he says. He takes a step forward. Then another. Closer, closer. She wants to push him back. It isn’t safe for him to be here. She doesn’t _want_ him to be here. “ _Leave_ Captain Janeway. _Then_ I’ll open the airlock. You can go.”

The thing that is her pauses. She feels it – a minute hesitation. Chakotay sees.

“Tell me what you need,” he says. “I want to help you. There must be another way.”

There is another pause. Janeway doesn’t know what the thing in her head is waiting for. Is it thinking? She tries to search her mind, but the cage holds her fast. Chakotay is watching her, his eyes studying her carefully. Janeway has the sense that he is looking for her – the _real_ her, the her buried so deep and so far away that it’s possible she might never be able to claw her way back to the surface.

“Is Captain Janeway still alive?” he asks, softly. “Is she still… inside, somewhere?”

_I’m here,_ she tells him, silently. _I am here, Chakotay._

The entity that has her captive doesn’t think much of the question. Janeway feels her body twisting around and a split second later she’s looking at the cargo bay door again.

**OPEN**

“I can’t do that,” Chakotay says again, with the same patience. “Not while the Captain could still be alive. It would kill her. You have to leave her first. You have to let her go.”

Janeway finds herself swinging around again and suddenly the rifle is back up at her shoulder, pointing straight at Chakotay’s head, and her fingers are twitching, flexing-

_NO_ she bellows, silently and yet so loudly that it would be deafening if only she had the use of her vocal chords.

The thing that is almost her flinches. It’s barely there, almost imperceptible. Chakotay doesn’t see it. But the Captain feels it. It heard her. The thing. It _did_.

“You can’t leave her without some other being to go to,” Chakotay says then, oblivious. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re space-dwelling. You can’t move in atmosphere without a host.”

She knows what he’s about to say before he says it. They’ve become good at this: speaking without words. It’s got to the point where they can almost always anticipate what the other is going to say. In other circumstances it would mean something different, something more. Here on _Voyager_ it simply makes them a good command team, in sync for so much of the time that when they are not they know they must take notice.

“Take me,” he says. “Leave her. Take me instead.”

Janeway’s bellow is so loud inside her head that she cannot believe he is unable to hear it. He’s standing right there, less than a metre from her, how can he not- How can he _not_ -

“I don’t think you can access a host’s thoughts,” Chakotay goes on, still calm, still poised. “If you could you’d already have Captain Janeway’s knowledge of how the cargo bay doors function. Or is it that they have to be willing? Either way, you won’t get what you want from the Captain. She’ll be fighting you every step of the way. So you’re either going to have to use that,” he nods at the phaser rifle, “and kill me, or leave her and take me instead. Because I won’t let you space her. Do you understand?”

Janeway feels the bunching in her muscles as the entity in her mind prepares to lunge. It’s enough of a warning for her to see what’s coming.

The silent bellow she screams into her own cranium is arresting enough to stop it dead. She sees Chakotay’s reaction as her body jerks in place. He frowns, creasing extra lines into his tattoo, eyes narrowing.

_DON’T,_ she orders, at the thing that has taken her whole _. I WILL HELP YOU. LISTEN TO ME. I WILL OPEN THE DOORS._

Her body stills and despite everything Janeway feels a burst of sudden triumph. She made it do that. She can’t turn her own head, but she spoke to it, this thing inside her head. Made it reconsider, if only for a moment. It’s a modicum of control, and she won’t give that up, not now she has it. Not for anything.

TELL HIM TO GO, she orders the entity. MAKE HIM LEAVE. DO THIS AND I WILL OPEN THE DOORS.

Chakotay is still watching her face. His eyes fix on hers – what were once hers – as the entity moves her head to look at him.

“Captain?” he says, as if seeing her – really her – for the first time. “ _Kathryn?_ “

The flicker is gone again, that brief second where she thinks he could see _her_ in her eyes. _Maybe I could have reached him then,_ she thinks. _So maybe there is a way._ It gives her a second of hope, and where there’s hope, there’s possibility. Hope, determination and self-control. It’s all she’s ever needed to succeed.

**GO**

“I can’t do that.”

**LEAVE**

“That’s not going to happen. I’ve told you what you need to do. So just-”

Her hands move. One arm swings, moving the rifle. Before Janeway knows what’s happening she feels the business end of the weapon pressing under her chin. Something flares in Chakotay’s eyes and he raises his hands, palms up.

“No,” he says, stepping back. “You don’t have to do that.”

**LEAVE**

“Just listen-“

_LET ME TALK TO HIM,_ she shouts through the bars of her cage. _I CAN MAKE HIM DO WHAT WE WANT HIM TO DO – BUT YOU HAVE TO LET ME TALK TO HIM. ME. JUST ME._

The entity hesitates again. She wonders what passes across her face when this happens, because she sees the flicker that tenses the muscles beneath Chakotay’s dark eyes and then he’s searching hers again, _searching_.

_If you don’t let me talk to him, we’re both going to die,_ she promises. _One way or another. He won’t let you go if he thinks it’s going to kill me. He won’t let me go if he thinks keeping you here keeps me alive. Let me talk to him._

When it comes, it is sudden, a sensation a little like taking a breath after too long under water. Kathryn gasps, and suddenly she can move.

“Chakotay,” she whispers. Her voice is even hoarser than usual.

“Kathryn?” he steps forward again, but the entity jerks her back, away from his touch.

“I’m here,” she says. “Chakotay, I’m still here.”

The relief on his face is absolute. “Hold on,” he says. “We’re going to work this out, Captain. Just hold on.”

“You have to go,” she tells him.

“ _What?_ ”

“I don’t have time to argue. Leave the cargo bay. Now,”

“Why?”

“I’m going to open the doors.”

“You _can’t_.”

“I _have_ to. It doesn’t want to kill me, Chakotay. It just wants to go home. It’ll leave me as soon as it can.”

“You open the doors and you’ll _die_ ,” he says.

“Not if you’re quick enough with the transporter.”

“ _What_?”

She can feel the bars sliding shut again. Forcing her back into her prison.

“Wait until the last second that you possibly can. Then beam me back in. Not to sickbay. Here, to make sure it’s gone. That’s an order, Commander.”

He sees her falling away from him. She can tell from the look on his face. Chakotay steps forward, reaches for her hands, but she’s still holding the phaser rifle. It is still set to kill.

“Do it, Chakotay,” is the last thing she says in her own voice. “Go-“

**GO**

**LEAVE**

The look he gives her is so piercing she thinks it may just have run her heart through if it hadn’t already been in her toes. Then he turns and runs, his hand already on his combadge, already shouting orders to the transporter room. When he reaches the exit he turns to look over his shoulder at her. Right at her. Then he’s gone.

**OPEN** demands the entity. **OPEN**

**OPEN OPEN**

_The control console,_ she says, no longer needing to shout. She has made it listen to her. _Take me to it._

It’s the work of seconds to release the safety controls. She’s already disengaged the forcefield. When the siren starts to wail, the cargo bay doors open directly into space.

The entity has her moving before the door has even begun to lift. Her arms fling down the phaser rifle. Her legs take long strides towards a freedom that will kill her. Janeway is knocked off her feet the second she sees a sliver of the eternal darkness outside. The bay depressurises so quickly she doesn’t even have a second to take a breath. Time speeds up. The stacked supplies become missiles, tumbling, crashing with her towards the void, threatening to crush her before she’s even cleared the threshold. And yet, as she’s sucked out of _Voyager_ and towards her certain death, something like euphoria suffuses her bones. It is a rush of joy so potent Kathryn thinks for a second that she must already be dead, and beyond is only bliss.

Janeway’s body cartwheels, tumbling feet over head out into the great nothing of space. Her lungs void their air so swiftly it is as if they never held any. Pain spears her, everywhere, a thousand blades of cold hurt splicing her asunder. The joy gathers in her gut, surges up her spine, explodes out of her stretched-wide mouth.

In the fraction of a second before she starts to freeze in the vacuum of space, she sees the being that took her body as its own. It is a wisp of something impossible, implausible, unbelievable. It ghosts from her mouth, out into the stars, and is-

Kathryn Janeway is already so far gone that when the transporter grips her she doesn’t even feel it. She vanishes much as the entity does, sucked back into her own world, her own space.

She materialises back inside the cargo bay. The door has re-sealed, but there has been no time to re-pressurise. She collapses against the hard deck, gasping like a suffocating fish. There’s barely enough of her left to be aware that she is dying.

She chases the joy, but it has gone.

Hands grab at her, dragging her up. Something is forced over her mouth and nose. Pure, cold air pumps down her raw throat, into her dying lungs. Someone is calling her name, but it is muffled, as if from very far away.

“Kathryn. _Kathryn_!”

Janeway forces her eyes open. Her vision is blurred. Fading. Above her is a face, obscured by an oxygen mask. She knows who it is by the tattoo that marks his temple. She registers, obscurely, that his short dark hair is waving in a breeze. Later she will realise that this is because the cargo bay is re-pressurising. There’s a mask on her own face, too. It is pumping her dying body full of oxygen. She hurts everywhere, but especially where he is holding her against him. She doesn’t know if this is because his grip on her is tight, or if it’s just that every one of her capillaries has ruptured and her entire epidermis is a developing bruise.

“ _Kathryn_ ,” Chakotay says again, his voice distorted both by the mask and something else less tangible, less permissible. He lifts one hand to brush his fingers across her forehead.

Then the EMH is there, running a tricorder over her from head to toe.

“The alien organism has gone,” says the Doctor. “But she has internal bleeding. I need to get her to sickbay right now.”

This time she feels the transporter. Then she feels nothing, for a very long time.

* * *

“Why didn’t you gas the cargo bay, knock me out?” she asks.

“The Doctor couldn’t give good odds that it would affect the organism enough to be worth the risk,” Chakotay tells her. “It had proven itself capable of exerting motor control over an inert human form. I thought it would be better if we could at least try to communicate with you, if you were still in there somewhere.”

Janeway is quiet for a moment. She is in her own bed, because after three weeks of sickbay care she has worn the EMH into submission on the understanding that bed-rest means just that, even in her own quarters. He has threatened spot checks with dire consequences should she ‘forget’. Chakotay is sitting in an armchair beside her. It’s the first time they’ve spoken properly about the events that almost killed _Voyager_ ’s Captain.

Kathryn looks at her hands, and then deliberately twines her fingers in her sheets. She can still remember the sensation of seeing them act without her volition. It haunts her dreams, that feeling. Other things do, too.

“I was shouting at you,” she says, not looking at him. “Shouting at you to get out of the cargo bay. I had a phaser rifle aimed right at you, and it was set to kill.”

He reaches for her hands. She finds herself wrapping her fingers around his.

“I could see glimpses of you fighting it. Kathryn, to know you were still alive…”

Chakotay lets that thought lapse into silence. He moves his fingers over hers, less a gesture of support and reassurance, more a caress. She likes it. She thinks about how he’d held her to his body on that cold cargo bay floor, and slips her hand away from his. He smiles slightly, lets her go without a fight.

“We must have a memorial for Cortez,” Janeway says, to move the conversation on. Her relief at discovering that her Ensign did not, in fact, die at her hand is private. The young man still perished on her ship, under her command.

Chakotay lifts a PADD from the floor onto his lap. “Actually, Captain, I’ve begun preparing just that. Or perhaps you’d prefer to do it yourself?

Kathryn looks at him, at his tattoo. She thinks about the way her heart had flamed out, a small star going supernova in her chest as she felt her fingers closing over that trigger. She realises that perhaps there might be something even worse than losing control.

“Together, Chakotay,” she says. “Let’s do it together.”

He smiles again. “Together is fine by me.”

[END]


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm in between finishing one big thing and starting the next big thing and I just wanted to write something fun. Plus I was on Zoom with ArgyleTrekkie a few weeks ago and she reminded me that I'd never finished this. Still not sure I ever will, but this came out of somewhere, so…
> 
> I've changed the title on this because the story never quite worked the way I thought it might and I'd ham-strung myself with the 'five times' format. 
> 
> Thank you, as ever, to MissyHissy3 for betaing.

She comes to in darkness, wading back to consciousness with a gasp and the instant realisation that she has slept too long.

“Chakotay?” Her mouth is so dry that his name comes out of her mouth as a rasp.

The sound of movement comes from somewhere to the rear of the shuttlecraft. “I’m here, Captain.”

He clicks on their one remaining emergency light and his face appears as a silhouette of exhausted angles, his breath misting in the air. Kathryn coughs, levers herself up from where she’d been lying. Her head aches. Her back aches. _Everything_ aches.

“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have let me sleep.”

He smiles slightly. “I’d have woken you if I needed you.”

When Janeway moves to get up something slips from across her body and she realises that it’s his jacket. It’s cold, the chill air biting at her lips and fingers, but he’s crouched against the battered bulkhead in just his polo neck, a phaser rifle lying across his bent legs.

She hands it back to him. “Thank you, but the last thing we need is you becoming hypothermic.”

Chakotay says nothing, leaving the rifle laying across his thighs to pull on his jacket. Then he passes her the water bottle. It’s half full or half empty depending on how you look at it. She suspects their answers would be different. Janeway drinks just enough to slake her thirst, because she has no idea when they’ll next be able to replenish their supply, or if they ever will at all. There’s no water source within half a day’s walking distance of the shuttlecraft that they’ve been able to find, nor any cover good enough to form a shelter and a defence when darkness comes. If they went too far, if they couldn’t make it back before nightfall, they’d be done for. The water in the bottle is the last they have, and they had to cut through the shuttle’s bulkhead and into the recycling reservoir to get at it.

“It’s dark,” she says. “Why haven’t they come?”

Chakotay shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“How long since the sun set?”

He leans his head back against the bulkhead. “Two hours.”

She stands and picks her way towards the cockpit. The downed shuttle’s nose is pressed into the barren ground, but the impact of the crash didn’t break the craft’s main window. Janeway puts her palms flat against the dead console and looks up. All she can see is a faint reflection of her own outline, backlit by Chakotay’s light. There’s no sign of movement in the darkness. Tension roils in her gut, churning, clotting, heavy.

As she stands there Chakotay gets up and moves towards her, the light swelling closer until he’s standing behind her, looking up too. There’s still no movement, just their two distorted forms caught in a bubble of artificial light.

“Two hours,” she whispers. “I don’t like this. Where are they? What are they waiting for?”

Chakotay says nothing, because what is there to say? A week of days they’ve been stuck on this planet, and every night has been a pitched guerrilla battle for survival, something in which he is far more experienced. This apparent respite, though, that’s a mystery to both of them. There’s no change in circumstance as far as either of them can make out.

“I estimate two more hours until dawn,” Chakotay says, quietly.

It’s the only good thing they have discovered about this planet. It has twin suns. They have parched the landscape, but it also means the nights are short. If not for this one saving grace, they’d have been dead the night they first came down.

Something pings against the shuttle’s main window, like a stone bouncing off the windshield of a car travelling at speed. Chakotay swings around towards the rear of the shuttlecraft, lifting the phaser rifle to his shoulder as Janeway lunges for her own. The back of the shuttle is a mess. The rear hatch was ripped away from its hinges in the crash, pulverising the nacelles. If not for the bulkhead plates scavenged from other areas of the shuttle, the type-9 would be entirely open to the elements. They used the last of the power in Chakotay’s phaser to weld this haphazard defence. Every night they’ve sealed themselves in, because the alternative is worse, but it cannot hold much longer.

The two officers stand silent, each holding their breath, waiting for the onslaught. _How much longer can we survive this?_ Janeway wonders. _Where_ are _you, Voyager? How can you not have found us?_

Janeway’s trigger finger trembles and she plants her feet more heavily on the deck. _Stand,_ she orders herself. _You stand, no matter what, you stand._

There’s another ping, then another, then another. From the corner of her eye she sees the ripple of a frown pass over Chakotay’s face. He looks back towards the cockpit window.

“Rain,” he says. “It’s-”

Between the split second it takes for him to say one word and the next, the hard drops become a torrent. Water crashes from the sky like a wall. The noise is terrific, as if volley after volley of photon torpedoes are impacting the shuttle’s hull. The prone craft actually rocks and _there is no way_ , she thinks, _there is no way any flying thing could survive this kind of maelstrom, and they knew it was coming, they knew._

Chakotay is shouting something to her and she can’t hear him over the cacophony of water but knows what he must be saying. They need water, desperately, and here it is, falling from the sky. They have to capture a store, now, in this tiny sliver of time when their enemy apparently cannot be abroad. Together they tear at one corner of the wall they have built to keep themselves in and everything else out, reopening their makeshift, essential blockade.

The water falls, on and on, as if an entire ocean has breached a dam. A corner of one welded panel comes away and Janeway leaves Chakotay to wrench at it while she makes for the shuttle’s empty water reservoir. She’s going to have to cut the vessel fully free and they’ll never be able to fit it back where it belongs, but Janeway has no hope that this craft will ever fly again.

She’s dragging the thing out when she hears a new sound, a different timbre to the roaring of water. It’s a metallic creaking, the sound of a bulkhead under pressure. She looks up, thinking that the shuttle’s roof is about to cave in. Then the creaking becomes a crunching sound and she realises with full horror that she’s looking in the wrong direction.

Janeway shouts to Chakotay, but he doesn’t hear her. She grabs his arm and turns him in time for them both to see the cockpit give. It doesn’t crumple entirely but it’s enough. They both see the crack spread across the window, a thin black line that fractures as the toughened screen gives way. Water pours into their shelter. In seconds they are ankle deep, then thigh deep, then waist deep. The invading torrent slams into their self-built bulkhead and washes back at them again at full force. Janeway’s knocked off her feet and into the freezing water. She goes down, head smashing against something that has been torn loose. For a moment she is breathing liquid ice. It must be less than a second later that she feels a change in pressure. The water around her is sucked away, the level dropping. Chakotay hauls her up. He’s blasted through their patchwork weld, a hole large enough to let the water drain into the rising sea outside. Their emergency light washes out with the tide, a white-blue beacon tumbling out in the wash, away from them, leaving them in darkness.

The rain is still falling, rushing through the breached shuttle like a river in full bate. Janeway can’t breathe. It’s as if the frigid torrent has frozen her lungs solid. Chakotay pulls her with him, dragging her bodily up and out of the flow. He staggers with her to one of the chairs and pushes her up onto it before climbing up beside her. Janeway reaches up and finds purchase against the shuttle’s ceiling, phaser rifle still clutched in the other hand. Chakotay does the same, so that there they are, back-to-back, shaking with cold, still ready to fight.

 _Stand,_ Janeway screams at herself, willing her knees not to give way, praying her frozen fingers will still respond on the trigger. _Stand, whatever happens, you stand._

The downpour ceases so suddenly that she thinks she must have blacked out. One second the noise is catastrophic, in the next there is utter silence. She’s shaking with cold and adrenaline, the second her only protection against the first. Chakotay stumbles down from the chair, then turns to help her, his hands fumbling to find her in the darkness. The silence, apart from their ragged breathing, is absolute. It rings in Janeway’s ears, alongside the sluggish pounding of her blood. She can’t see him. They’re standing close enough for her to feel the warmth of his breath. She can’t speak. She’s too cold. She’s too exhausted. They both are. Without even really meaning to she leans her forehead against his chest. Chakotay lifts the hand that isn’t clutching his phaser rifle and rests it against the back of her neck.

It’s Chakotay who hears it first. She knows because his fingers tense against her skin, then drop away entirely. Then he’s moving and she’s moving because she can hear it too. It’s like the worst dawn chorus she’s ever heard, all the more abominable because this world is still pitch black. The sound ploughs nearer, squawks and screeches and the flapping of sharp wings straight out of an Old Master’s depiction of hell. It’s dark and she can’t see and the shuttle is breached and they have no shelter, no defence. She reaches back and grabs Chakotay’s hip, dragging him to her so that they’re back-to-back again. She feels his arm lift and tense and knows he’s got the phaser primed against his shoulder. She does the same, because it’s all they can do. They’re going to die here, tonight, on this unknown, unnamed planet. They’re going to die here together and no one will ever know what happened to them.

The creatures descend and she starts firing first, though Chakotay is only a beat behind. The rifle blasts light up the interior of the shuttle in staccato bursts of horrifying momentary clarity. It’s like watching a stop-motion chain of events. Every blast illuminates a growing horde of creatures cramming their way in through the breach like giant termites with wings and jagged mandibles swarming out of a disturbed nest. Janeway fires and fires and fires and she’s so tired and so cold that she thinks she might expire from exhaustion, thinks she might just die on her feet even before these things can tear her apart and _there can’t be much power left in this rifle and stand, you will stand, you will stand._

She doesn’t know how long it lasts, how long she’s bathed in the intermittent light from her rifle fire. The concussion of noise has beaten her senseless and she’s just a machine, firing, firing. The first she knows that something has changed is when Chakotay’s hand lands on her shoulder. She blinks, a motion that seems to take an age, and that’s when she realises that the sun is rising. There is light in the sky not formed by their weapons fire. Dawn has broken, and the only thing they know about these creatures is that they come with the night and they leave with the day.

Chakotay fires one last volley of phaser fire, silencing the flapping squark of a creature dying but not dead.

The attack is over.

They’re both still alive.

>*<

Overnight the temperatures drop well below freezing, but once the suns have fully risen the air is hot enough to scorch. Outside the shuttle, the desiccated soil has already sucked up most of the colossal downpour; once both suns are up the rest will evaporate quickly. They must collect whatever water they can before it vanishes again. They scoop it from the floor of the shuttle, they tip it from whatever places it has collected. Bit by bit as the air heats up they refill the shuttle’s reservoir and then seal it. They both move slowly, utterly drained by the night’s events, but they can’t afford to rest, at least not for long. Somehow they have to find a way to seal the shuttle again. If they can’t, the next night will be their last.

Still, they both grind to a halt after their water store is filled. Chakotay sinks down onto a boulder, shoulders and head stooping towards the ground. Janeway can see the last moisture left in his uniform evaporating before her eyes. She’s still wet through, but then she was the one that went under. She undoes her jacket and pulls it off, then does the same with her polo neck. She leaves her tank top in place but takes her bra from beneath it. She sheds her boots and pants, too, laying everything out on the already dry ground. The heat drifts across the bare skin of her arms and legs, but she’s too exhausted to enjoy the warmth and besides if she let herself do that she’d probably just fall asleep. _Ten minutes,_ she thinks. _Then we’ll work out how to secure the shuttle._ By then her uniform will be baked dry.

“There’s something I have to tell you.”

She turns to look at Chakotay and finds him watching her. “What?”

He clasps his hands together between his knees, looks at them instead of her. “My phaser rifle is dead. The last shot I took was the last the battery had in it.”

Janeway takes this in. All they have now is one phaser rifle between them. Everything else is spent. They’ve already used everything just to stay alive. She turns away, looks out at the landscape.

“Okay.”

“Yours can’t be far behind.”

She nods, but says nothing.

“Captain…”

He doesn’t need to say it. The place is a desert of sand and rock. There is nothing here that they can use to patch up the shuttle. To weld shut the breaches they have to have a working phaser to cut and forge the metal. If they use the last of her phaser’s power and it runs out before they finish they will have nothing with which to defend themselves when the suns set.

There is nowhere else they can go, nothing else they can do.

She reaches out, touches her uniform pants. They’re dry already. The sun is beginning to burn her shoulders. She feels lightheaded, already halfway dead. _You will stand,_ she thinks to herself. _You will stand._ She gets up, she gets dressed.

“Let’s assess our options.” She starts to walk towards the shuttle.

“Kathryn…”

She turns to look at him again and he’s standing. “I’m not giving up until we know there’s no chance, Chakotay. And there’s always a chance.”

He looks at her a moment more, and then he nods and follows.

The insulation inside the shuttle keeps out the heat as well as it kept out the cold of deep space. They’ve been in the sun for less than an hour but it’s a relief to step into the shade of the fractured craft. They examine the torn section of plating that Chakotay shot through, first to release the water and then to keep out the creatures. It’s not as bad as either of them feared. There’s enough panelling left over to seal that breach as long as there’s power in Janeway’s phaser. It’s the cockpit that’s the biggest problem. Not just the fact that the window is gone, leaving a gaping hole, but that the structure itself has partially crumpled. It’s weakened now, and uneven. They don’t have enough sheet metal to patch it, and even if they did they’d have to shape it to fit. They don’t have the tools. They don’t have the materials. They don’t have the time.

Janeway still won’t give up. “This is our priority,” she says. “If we can seal this, we can find a way to deal with the smaller hole at the rear of the shuttle.”

Chakotay's weariness is inscribed in every move he makes, even as he puts his hands on his hips. But, “All right,” is all he says. “Let’s try.”

The phaser doesn’t even get half way through the job before it sputters out. Janeway forces the casing open and wastes an hour tinkering with its guts, trying to get more juice from the battery, but it’s hopeless. It’s dead.

“All right,” she says. “We need another plan.”

“Kathryn.”

“What about if we could tip the shuttle? Turn it over, so that-“

Chakotay reaches out and takes her face between both his hands. “ _Kathryn_.”

They stand there together in silence. His hands on her cheeks are warm, soothing. She’s so exhausted, she’s so tired, and for a moment his hands on her are all that are keeping her upright.

“I don’t think there’s anything more we can do,” he says, quietly.

“There has to be. There _must_ be.”

“What if there isn’t?”

She can’t answer that, she can’t bear to answer that, so she shakes her head.

“Listen,” he says, voice still quiet. “What about if we create a decoy?”

“What do you mean?”

“We dig a hole. Out there, in the sand, against one of the rocks. Line it with whatever metal sheeting we can rip free, top it with whatever’s left.”

Janeway lifts her face away from his hands, frowning. “But once they know we’re not in the shuttle they’ll just search elsewhere for their prey. They can obviously sense us.”

“Maybe. Probably,” he acknowledges. “But maybe not if they find what they’re looking for.”

“What do you-” she stops, because she’s worked out what he’s saying. Kathryn takes a step back, turns away from him because she can’t- “No. _No_.”

“We’re out of options. This is all we’ve got left. If I can act as a decoy, you might survive.”

“It’d buy me a day, maybe not even that. And for _what_? So I can die alone a few hours later, knowing that I let you-” she can’t even finish the sentence. “No.”

He reaches out, grabs her arm, pulls her towards him slightly. “It might give you a few hours more than you’re going to have if we don’t do this, Kathryn, and who knows, maybe that’ll be enough for _Voyager_ to find you. I’m your first officer. It’s my duty to protect you and this is the only way I can think of to do that in this situation.”

She looks up at him, imagines what those creatures will do to him, imagines hiding somewhere and letting it happen, doing nothing while he dies horribly, alone, for _her_ , for nothing but a few hours and a forlorn hope. “No,” she whispers, her eyes full of tears. “I can’t do it. I can’t let _you_ do it. I can’t. I won’t.”

They’re still for a moment. Then Chakotay slides his hand up her arm, over her shoulder, up her neck, until his hand is cupping her face again. With his thumb he wipes away the tears she hasn’t been able to blink back.

“Then I don’t think,” he whispers, “that there’s anything else we can do except fight with our bare hands.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll stand. And we’ll fight.”

He makes a sound in his throat, desolate. “I don’t want this for you.”

“I don’t want this for you, either.”

He shuts his eyes briefly. “Kathryn,” he says. “If this is the end, if this is all we’ve got left-”

“Yes,” she says. “Yes.”

The first kisses are gentle. They stand there, in the wreck, and build something new between them. Chakotay holds her as if she might break, as if somehow, despite all he’s seen her do, all he’s seen her survive, he knows there’s still a difference between the woman and the role. She kisses him as if she’s never kissed before, because this is Chakotay and she has spent so long blocking out the idea that this could ever happen that now it is she feels as if she has no idea how any of this works. In any case, she could do only this for days, just this soft meeting of lips, this unhurried learning. If only they had time to do this slowly, she thinks, if only they could take days, weeks, months, years, if only they hadn’t had to come to the end for her to realise that this is what they should have been doing from the beginning.

“Kathryn,” he whispers, kissing her neck, and the sound of him saying her name like that, like _this_ , with his lips against her skin, flicks a switch inside her, lights her up like a star burning out.

By the time the sun begins to set, she feels a kind of peace. There’s no sense in fighting back-to-back when all they have is the phaser rifles to use as clubs. Besides, Kathryn gets the sense that they both need to see each other for as long as they can. They’ve chosen a corner to fight in and they’re braced side by side, backs up against the wall. They’ve been quiet since they helped each other dress. There’s not much more to say. They’ve made as much of a barricade as they can. It won’t hold, but then neither of them expect it to. Janeway thinks about _Voyager_ , about the crew, how after stranding them here in the Delta Quadrant she won’t be there to help them fight their way home. Chakotay rests his hand on her shoulder, slowly strokes it across her back, pulls her to him, presses his lips to her temple, rests his forehead against hers.

“They’ll make it,” he says, quietly. “Tuvok will make sure of it.”

She twists her fingers into his jacket and holds him there, just a second longer. Then there it is, on the horizon, that dreadful sound that has presaged every attack. It rolls towards them through the darkness, a single colossus of noise made up of a hundred thousand individual terrors. Then the swarm is on them and there is only chaos.

In seconds they’ve breached the barriers and are inside the shuttle. It sounds as if hundreds of them have entered all at once, colliding with bulkheads, crashing into anything still left inside, screeching, screaming. Janeway and Chakotay have made shields of the last metal they could salvage and have ranged these before them at an angle, their last bastion of protection. The creatures pound against them again and again, scrabbling at the edges, prising, juddering, hammering. One hits so hard that it impacts Kathryn’s head, smacking it back against the bulkhead behind. She feels one gain purchase against the edge, sharp talons scraping into her leg, hooking her like a fish. They’re seconds from being overwhelmed. She can’t see Chakotay but feels him moving, frantic, jabbing motions that make her think one has got to him. She can’t do anything to help, even as a club the phaser rifle is useless, because if she let’s go of this shielding there will be no time to raise it.

Something explodes. No – it’s not an explosion. It’s a pulse, almost, that ripples through the ground beneath them. The creatures scream again, a unified sound.

The pulse comes again and the shuttle shudders. Light cuts through the fractured hull, blindingly white. For the first time that night Janeway can see the creatures. They’re still crashing around but their movements are panicked now, frantic. They’re no longer hunting. They’re trying to escape.

The pulse comes again and this time it’s strong enough to lift the shuttle before slamming it down, hard enough to rattle her bones. Most of the swarm has dispersed but some are still trapped inside the shuttle. Kathryn struggles to her feet, raises the rifle, smashes it down. She picks off one of the creatures, then another, then another.

There’s the sound of metal shearing against metal and she swings around to see a laser cutting through their partially welded seal. Then she realises that Chakotay’s still on the ground. Blood is gushing from a jagged wound torn in his leg. She drops down beside him, pressing her hands to it, trying to stop him bleeding out there and then. There’s a crash as the rear of the shuttle falls away and there’s a figure in full body armour wielding a phaser rifle silhouetted against the light but she’s trying to stop Chakotay’s life flowing out from between her fingers and she can’t- 

“Stay with me,” she orders. “Chakotay-”

He lifts one hand and touches her cheek and when she looks at him his lips form her name, _Kathryn_ , and she can still feel him saying it against her neck and she would rather die herself, she would rather-

Hands other than hers bear him away.

>*<

Through the window of her quarters, the planet’s surface seems occluded, the same atmospheric disturbances that downed them in the first place still confounding _Voyager_ ’s sensors. She’s reading Tuvok’s reports, which detail how the ship lost track of the shuttle in a sudden storm as it returned from a routine high-altitude sensor sweep. It’s a miracle they were found at all given that the ship’s systems were of no use. The planet is uncharted and will remain so, because the only way to accomplish such a map would be on foot. Best leave it to the planet’s own inhabitants.

Janeway wonders what the place looks like now, 48 hours after that downpour. She imagines that, like a monsoon over the parched places of Earth, dormant seeds will now be flowering, spreading like spilled paint across the dead sands. There must be animal life there too, somewhere, because those creatures survive in their thousands and something must sustain them.

She has no desire to stay and find out.

Her door chime sounds. “Come,” she says, turning her head, expecting to see the Doctor making another tiresome house call. The last person she expects to see crossing her threshold is Chakotay.

“Captain.”

“What are you _doing_?” she says, bolting to her feet. “You shouldn’t be out of sickbay! You shouldn’t be _standing_ , not yet!”

“I’m all right,” he says, as the door hisses shut behind him. “I persuaded the Doctor to let me collect something from my quarters.”

Kathryn grasps his arm and pulls him to the sofa beneath the stars. “Sit down.”

He sinks onto the cushions and she can see the pain he’s still in, despite the fact that the wound has knitted well. He looks out of the window at the orange-brown smudge of the planet above them.

“I was going to come and see you later,” she says. “I’m just catching up on what I missed.”

Chakotay turns to look at her and the affection in his smile is so intimate it makes her head spin. She looks away.

“I thought it might be better if we talked somewhere a little more private than sickbay,” he said, softly, into her silence. “And I think the sooner we do talk, the better for both of us.”

Janeway takes a hard breath. She never expected to live, but she did. She’s alive, and now-

Chakotay reaches out and takes her hand, lifting it towards him until he can cradle it in both of his. “I need to say something,” he says, softly, with a kind of determined calm that makes her heart invert itself. “It’s going to take a lot for me to say it, and it’s going to take a lot for you to hear it. But for my own sake, Kathryn, I have to make this clear.”

Her eyes blur. She can’t speak because whatever she says now will be wrong, and she owes it to him to listen. After everything, she at least owes him that.

He nods at her silence, takes it for the agreement it is. Chakotay looks down at her hand, strokes her knuckle.

“Since I became your first officer, I have done everything in my power to make things easier for you,” he says. “I know how tough a command this is. For every difficulty the rest of the crew has out here I know you feel it a hundred times over. And I know, no matter what I try to take, the weight remains on your shoulders. And so I’ve always tried to do what I can not to add to what you carry.”

Kathryn’s fingers flex against his hand and he squeezes them lightly. He pauses, looking out towards the stars with a frown.

“But this,” he says. “ _Us._ What we did, together, on that planet, what happened between us…” he looks at her again, and her heart beats its way right up into her throat. He shakes his head. “I can’t make this easy for you, Kathryn. I can’t do it. Love is too small a word for it and the only way I will be able to live with it is if it’s a turning point. It has to be a yes or a no, and if it’s a no, then that’s how we move forward. I will always be here for you. I will always be the best First Officer I can be for you and this crew. But if what happened isn’t a beginning, then it’s an end. It has to be. In this one thing, Kathryn, I am putting myself first, because I have to, and I know this won’t be easy for you, but there it is. We crossed a line and we can’t go back. We can only go forward. It has to be one thing or another. It can’t be both. Do you understand?”

She’s crying now, the tears sliding down her face, and she doesn’t even try to stop them.

“We’ve survived everything this journey has thrown at us,” he says. “And we’ve done that together, despite what’s been between us for as long as I can remember. And I just think-”

_“Sickbay to Commander Chakotay.”_

The Doctor’s irate tones cut across Chakotay’s words. He shuts his eyes briefly, then taps his combadge to reply. “Chakotay here.”

_“May I remind you, Commander, that I allowed you to leave sickbay on the proviso that you would go only to your quarters, and that you would return immediately.”_

“I’ll be back shortly, Doctor.”

_“Do you require a site-to-site?”_

“No, I-” Chakotay sighs. “I’m on my way. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

_“Make sure you are, Commander.”_

Silence reigns in the wake of this interruption. In it Kathryn looks out at the planet.

“I have to go,” Chakotay says, softly.

She nods, but can’t look at him. Chakotay brushes his fingers across her cheek, slips his hand around the back of her neck, pulls her into a kiss as deep as anything they shared in what they thought was their last night alive.

“Let me know,” he whispers, against her lips.

And then he’s gone. 

[TBC]


End file.
